My Best Friend's Second Funeral
by AttemptingToWriteMore
Summary: What if Sherlock hadn't been recalled from the mission at the end of His Last Vow? Over six months after Sherlock leaves, John receives a phone call with some bad news that he refuses to believe... (No slash)
1. The Call

"John?"

The second I heard the voice on the other end of the phone, I wished I'd never picked it up. A foreboding flowed through me. Mycroft Holmes wasn't going to tell me anything good.

I had been sitting in my surgery in an almost blissful near-ignorance, trying to sort through my paperwork before it was time for the next patient's appointment, when the phone rang.

"Something's happened. I thought you should know." A part of my mind, a part I'd endeavoured to ignore, not wanting to confront the suspicions that lurked there, had been dreading this phone call for months, ever since Sherlock, my best friend, had been sent on a mysterious mission to Eastern Europe.

"What is it?" Curiosity mingled with my fear. Another part of my mind was desperate for any news at all of Sherlock.

"Sherlock... Sherlock's dead," Mycroft's tone was unemotional and factual. I'd be lying if I said the statement was unexpected. And, yet, although I'd considered the possibility, something inside me broke at his words. Then I remembered the last time I'd felt that feeling. Anger rose up inside me, anger at the things I thought I'd reconciled myself to.

Images flashed before my eyes, the way they say your life does just before you die. All the images were of Sherlock, but the one that kept being repeated was of him falling through the air after he jumped off the hospital roof. He hadn't died then.

He wasn't dead. I knew it. Mycroft had to be lying to me.

"I'm not letting you two do this to me again!" I shouted down the phone.

"John, listen to me..."

"No! Last time I let him and you trick me together! I grieved for years and he wasn't even dead!" In truth it was Sherlock who I was angry at, not Mycroft. But Sherlock wasn't there to yell at. Mycroft, who had assisted Sherlock when he'd faked his death before, was the next best thing. "He's not dead! Don't you dare lie to me! Tell me where he is!" My yelling was probably more than audible to everyone in the surgery, but I didn't care.

"John, he's... he's gone. He really is dead. The details are confidential... so I can't tell you how it happened. But I can tell you that he put up a good fight. He saved hundreds of lives with what he did out there."

"Nothing you say will fool me. Last time, I saw him fall. I saw the body, the blood. I felt his stopped pulse! But he wasn't dead! He isn't dead this time either!"

"Well, we managed to get the body home. The funeral's tomorrow morning." He named the time and place in an incredibly weary voice, before hanging up.

I was left to my thoughts, to my anger, to my disbelief, to my fear. Thoughts raced through my head but all of them seemed disjointed and out of reach. I was almost glad when they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Come in." It was Caroline, one of the doctors I shared my surgery with.

"I just wanted to check if you were ok."

"You heard."

"I could hardly not... Is something wrong?" I wanted to think that she was asking out of kindness, but the cynical side of me thought she was probably rooting for gossip.

"No. Well, yes. I just heard... I got some bad news on the phone. I'm sorry I disturbed you."

She gave me a strange look and I had a feeling that she must have guessed from my shouts the nature of my bad news. I knew that Caroline, like everyone I ever met now, must know of my association with Sherlock Holmes, although she had never mentioned it to me.

Sherlock, and by extension me, had been in the news often enough. The incident with Charles Augustus Magnussen and Sherlock's leaving for Eastern Europe had not been covered, however. Mycroft must have hushed it up. But there had been plenty of speculation about the disappearance of the famous consulting detective, and I'd even needed to decline requests for information from several newspapers and news channels.

"Are you alright to stay to deal with your patients' this afternoon?" she said, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Yeah. I'll be fine." What was the point in leaving early? All I would do at home would be to wallow in my denial and theorise about how he did it this time. At least at work I would have something to distract me.

Or so I thought. But in reality nothing could distract me from thoughts of Sherlock. As each patient came in, I engaged in something that had become an unconscious habit of mine over the last six months. Taking in their appearance, I tried to work out what Sherlock would deduce about them.

Occasionally I would hit upon a correct fact, although it was only ever with things that Sherlock would have called obvious. Sometimes I could extract a small amount of surprise from the patient when I revealed that I knew their job or the pet they kept. They probably knew what I was doing, having recognised me as Sherlock Holmes' friend.

Most of the time, anyway, I drew a blank at their appearance. The attempts at deduction just made me feel worse. My mental comparisons between Sherlock's genius and my own feeble ideas made me miss him even more. I felt I was letting Sherlock down, having known him so well and yet learnt so little from him.


	2. Telling Mary

When I got home from work, my wife Mary, who was still on maternity leave to care for our baby daughter Holly, asked me cheerily how my day was. Then she looked at me more closely and anxiety clouded over her features.

"Oh John, what's wrong?"

I didn't want to tell her. I knew she wouldn't believe that Sherlock had survived. I didn't want her to test my certainty that Mycroft was lying.

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"John, I can see you're not." I suppose my emotions must have been written all over my face. Sherlock always said I was easy to read. I didn't want to lie to Mary so I admitted the cause of my discontent.

"Mycroft called me at work. He says Sherlock's dead."

"Oh God. Oh no. I'm so sorry. I'll miss him so much."

"It's not true. Mycroft was lying. Sherlock is alive."

"I know what happened last time." Mary clearly understood my train of thought. Yet she doubted the conclusion I'd arrived at. "But he... he wasn't immortal. We knew- he knew- that this mission was dangerous."

"But not too dangerous for him!"

"John, why would Mycroft lie about this?"

"The same reason as last time. Sherlock told him to."

Obviously seeing I was not going to alter my view, Mary changed tack. "Did Mycroft say when the funeral is?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Will you go?"

"No. I've already attended one unnecessary funeral for Sherlock. I'm not making a fool of myself again. I know he's alive."

"Don't you think he'd want you to go?"

"Oh, sure. He does. He wants everyone to go and cry and mourn. He wants us all to say how much we miss him and how wonderful he was. He's always been so arrogant," I said bitterly. Mary gasped at that last bit. Her eyes were wet with tears.

"I'll have to go on my own then..."

"If you want to go to the funeral of someone who's still alive, be my guest."

As I left the room in anger, Mary looked after me with a mixture of sadness, confusion and pity. I had previously believed that, as our relationship had survived my wife shooting my best friend and admitting her past life as an assassin, our marriage was invincible. But in that moment I wondered whether her believing that Sherlock was dead could tear us apart.

I missed him so much. Life without him felt incomplete. I enjoyed my job. I loved my wife and daughter. I had friends who, unlike Sherlock, couldn't make me want to kill them just by opening their mouths. But it was all so dull, so commonplace. Since he'd left, he kept intruding on my thoughts all the time. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I couldn't help but think that I'd much rather be running through the streets of London with him, hunting down a thief, or risking my life to catch a vicious criminal, or watching his complex mind at work on some gruesome and improbable murder.

I knew that these thoughts were insane. I mean, what kind of person wishes that they were risking their life? Maybe Sherlock had turned me crazy. Or maybe I'd always been like this. What was it that Sherlock had told me? _You are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You are abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people._ Once again, he'd been right. I only ever realised how much I needed danger until it was taken away. I'd felt a similar restlessness in the interlude between when I returned from Afghanistan and when I met Sherlock. Underneath the grief, I'd felt it after he had faked his death. In more recent times, I had only kept insanity at bay with the reassurance that he would be back in six months- he had informed me that Mycroft had said so.

When the six month mark came and went, I told myself that even Mycroft couldn't be totally accurate, but Sherlock would certainly be back soon. Now, even though I had dismissed the idea of him being truly gone, I wasn't sure I could cope with his disappearance. Who knew how long it would take him to get round to returning to London now? For how long would I have to survive this tedious normality?

As I lay in bed that night, after an evening of awkwardly ignoring discussion of the person who was on both mine and Mary's minds, my thoughts turned to Sherlock's last funeral. My memories of it were blurred. But that was not surprising; for me the whole occasion had seemed blurred even whilst it was happening, for I had spent the entire time trying to hold back tears, not very successfully. I knew that I had stood up to speak about Sherlock, but had no idea what I said. How could I have ever expressed what I was feeling that day? The turnout had been good, although not worthy of such a great man. Despite being supposedly discredited, Sherlock still had plenty of people grateful for the things he had done. I so remember that someone had played a composition of Sherlock's on the violin and everyone, save Mycroft, had cried.

Even with my knowledge of Sherlock's certain survival, I didn't think I would be to manage all that again. That, not anger at Sherlock, was the reason I had told Mary I wouldn't attend Sherlock's funeral.


	3. The Tears

Of course, I did end up going to the funeral. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision, but when I got dressed that morning, I put on my solemn black suit. I told myself that the reason I was going was because it had occurred to me that Sherlock might choose his funeral as the moment to reveal that he was still alive. That would be just like him. He would come in a disguise and watch the funeral service with a small smile playing across his features, a hint of amusement at the emotions displayed on his behalf. Then he would stand up and make some incredibly witty comment, acting as though everything was alright. I wouldn't want to miss that, irritating though it would be.

"Are you going then?" Mary asked, seeing me my attire.

"Yes," I confessed.

"Does that mean..?" I heard the unsaid words that finished her sentence._Does that mean you've accepted that Sherlock is dead?_

"No." I projected more certainty into that word than I truly felt.

"Oh." She gave a short, almost disappointed nod, then changed the subject. "But if we're both going, what'll we do with Holly?" Shamefully, I hadn't considered that.

"It's too late to get a babysitter now. We'll have to take her with us."

"We can't take her to a funeral!"

"We always wanted to introduce her to Sherlock," I said, truthfully. I knew that my sentimentality surrounding my daughter and Sherlock was irrational. He had always maintained a cold indifference towards children and I had no reason to suppose his behaviour towards Holly would be any different. But I still had a desire for the three most important people in my life- Mary, Holly and Sherlock- to be connected.

In the end we did take Holly take to the funeral. When we entered, pushing in the pram, I noticed that, despite the smallness of the church, only the first row of pews were filled. I suppose that Mycroft had only called the people closest to Sherlock, but to see so few people attending seemed wrong and unfair in light of how many lives he'd changed.

Mary put her arm around me. Her touch was comforting, though I hadn't realised, and didn't understand why, I needed reassurance. I saw Mycroft coming up to greet us.

"I'm glad you decided to come." Then, having examined me, he remarked "It's a shame you still think I'm a liar." In a bizarre way, I'd missed having my every thought and action deduced, the way Sherlock would do constantly. "All the same, he'd want you to speak. Would say a few words about him for the service?"

Not quite knowing why I was agreeing to this, I nodded. "I will."

I spent most of first half of the service trying to work out what I would say. Holly was surprisingly quiet- it must have been one of her good days. The similarities between Sherlock's last funeral and this service formed a painful brand of déjà vu for me. Everything that was said, I felt had already heard. I didn't want to hear it all again. It only brought back awful memories of the time I'd tried to forget. The image of Sherlock jumping from the hospital roof played upon my inner eye again and again.

When it came to my turn to speak, I still had absolutely no idea what I was going to say, but at Mycroft's cue, I went up to the front of the church anyway.

Standing there I was intensely aware of two things. The first was that the coffin lay just behind me, so close. I couldn't help wondering what poor soul's body was in there._Not Sherlock's_, I mentally repeated to myself._He's alive, he's alive..._

The second thing I noticed was that from my position I could see the expressions of everyone there. I could see Lestrade's clenched fists and trembling lip, the lines of smudged mascara inked around Molly's eyes, Mrs Hudson sniffing and dabbing at her face with a tissue and Sherlock's parents with red-rimmed eyes and slumped forms. Only Mycroft's face was unreadable. It infuriated me that the people who cared for Sherlock were here in such sorrow, when I knew that he couldn't be dead. I opened my mouth to start speaking and, without any consultation with my brain, the words came out.

"I'm not going to say what he wants me to. I'm not going to say that Sherlock**was**a great man. He**is**a great man. He is still alive." Mary was shaking her head, mouthing the word_don't_at me. But I couldn't stop and I didn't want to. "Do you all forget so easily? Sherlock tricked us last time, let us believe he was dead. Don't let him trick you again. The only evidence we have that Sherlock is dead comes from him." With the last word I pointed to Mycroft, who was sitting at the back of the church, as though he was avoiding the other mourners. He had a strange expression on his face, one that didn't seem to fit with his features. I couldn't quite read what it was.

"He's lying to us! He helped Sherlock fake his death before! He's doing it again!" I said, realising that my voice was sounded petty and cruel even to my own ears. Mrs Holmes glared at me before looking back at her eldest son. Mycroft slowly stood up, with all eyes on him, and opened his mouth to speak, looking as though he was about to make an impressive defence against my accusations.

Then something happened that even now I can hardly comprehend. A solitary tear slid quietly from Mycroft's eye. As it ran down his cheek, I felt that tear washing away the image of Mycroft that I had in my head, the idea of a cold intelligent machine of a man. It was as if that tear was the first rock of an avalanche. His facade shattered with an awful wailing noise and he buried his face in his hands, weeping like a child.

I was astounded. Seeing Mycroft with tears coursing down his face was like looking at the corpse of a unicorn, inducing a strange cocktail of tragedy, pity and disbelief within me. The situation reminded me of the moment in a dream when you realise how impossible the bizarre scenario in front of you is, when you feel that none of it can actually be real, but you cannot remember why.

Mycroft was aggressively wiping his eyes with a tissue that had been handed to him by Mrs Hudson. A few words were audible through the ugly sobs that convulsed through him.

"He's gone... Dead... Sherlock... My little brother... I can't..." Suddenly the guilt hit me like a slap. Now I saw the full force of the emotion that was hidden behind Mycroft's mask, I realised that he wasn't faking this. Even if he could act this well, he would never have voluntarily destroyed his dignity in such a way. I had aggressively and unjustly accused a grieving man at his brother's funeral. I was the bad guy here, not Mycroft. I unfroze, running forward to comfort him. I needed to act so I didn't have to confront the implications of Mycroft's distress.

"God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean... I shouldn't have... I just..." I couldn't articulate why I had said what I said. But Mycroft seemed to have got his crying under control. He began to speak in a trembling voice.

"I know you don't want to believe that he's gone. I didn't either at first. But I investigated all the ways he could have escaped. I sent out my best agents to interrogate the people who were there. I even did a DNA test on the body! I tried everything! But there was no escape! He's dead!"

The tears seemed to build up in Mycroft again and the next words he spoke were so quiet and quivering that I could barely hear them. "I sent him to his death... I knew and yet I..." Then he exploded into sobbing again. Except now, I joined him in his crying.

Because Sherlock was dead.

This time, he really was dead.

_(Thanks very much for reading. This is my first ever fanfiction so I'd be really grateful if you could leave a review. Constructive criticism would be very useful.)_


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